Learning how to use scissors not only develops important fine motor skills, but also uses the same fingers and muscles as holding a pencil.
This activity should be closely supervised at all times.
Supplies: child friendly scissors, various kinds of paper (e.g., white paper, construction paper, newspaper, magazine, paper towel, thin cardboard, cardstock, etc.)
The correct way to grip scissors is to have the thumb through one hole and the index finger (or index and middle fingers) through the second hole. The thumb should always be up and the rest of the fingers down.
Monkey's scissors are beginner's scissors which have a little automatic release trigger that opens the scissors up again after he has closed them.
After showing Monkey the right way to hold his scissors, he started cutting. I encouraged him to start with the newspaper first, because it's very thin. He didn't argue since I had found some newspaper with pictures of cars on it.
Monkey must get some experience with scissors at preschool because he knew what to do!
He needed lots of reminders to keep his thumb up. He kept cutting sideways or wth his thumb down.
Monkey was very proud of himself. He was able to get through all the different kinds of paper and cardboard pretty easily, except for the paper towel which proved to be the hardest.
This activity was very open-ended, focused only on the skill of cutting (by owning and closing the scissors).
Once Monkey is confident with his cutting and has a little more control, we can move onto cutting on a line, the next step in learning how to cut.
Mar
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